The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it would impose additional sanctions on Russia after Moscow failed to give reasonable assurances it would not use chemical weapons after a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in England.

The U.S. State Department intends to impose more sanctions on Russia for failing to meet conditions under an international chemical weapons law after a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in Britain in March, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

The U.S. State Department advised Congress on Tuesday that Russia had not met a deadline to provide assurances that it would not use nerve agents against its own people after an attack on a former Russian spy in Britain, congressional committee aides said.

Chemists have found a way to select the outcome of chemical reaction by employing an elusive and long-sought factor known as the ‘impact parameter’ — the miss-distance by which a reagent molecule misses a target molecule, thereby altering the products of chemical reaction. Termed the ‘forbidden fruit of reaction dynamics’, the impact parameter has previously defied direct control.
Source: Science Daily

Britain and the Netherlands accused Russia of running a global campaign of cyber attacks to undermine democracies, including a thwarted attempt to hack into the U.N. chemical weapons watchdog while it was analyzing a Russian poison used to attack a spy.

Britain and the Netherlands accused Russia of running a global campaign of cyber attacks to undermine Western democracies, including what the Dutch government described as an attempt to hack into the U.N. chemical weapons watchdog.

The European Union’s top officials expressed serious concern on Thursday about a cyber attack carried out against the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague by Russia’s military intelligence service.

Germany and the United States agree on the need to do everything possible to prevent the use of chemical weapons in Syria, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Wednesday after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.